A friend at university had a comic book with one of the world's greatest titles: "Beautiful stories for ugly children."

Here we have another one, a Newberry Winner no less.

Two forebodings that dogged me throughout were 1) It read like research that wasn't fully understood. 2) The author has a very English-sounding name.

So...I have some idea how wolves raise their young, how Eskimo compasses are built, and how sleds are made from nothing but ice and string, but this book doesn't give enough explanation to safely do any of those things.

That's not the point of course. She was never going to let a 13 year old girl stay in the wilderness any length of time.

It's the last line of Julie's last song on the last page which is the most troubling:"That the hour of the wolf and the Eskimo is over."

My Russian(?) reference book tells me that the Inuit are still spread out across Greenland, Russia, Canada and the U.S.